The Workplace: Seeking unskilled workers
By Thomas Fuller International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
DONGGUAN, China One of the oddest sights for visitors to this industrial city is the bright red banners proclaiming labor shortages at massive, modern factories. Labor shortages in China?
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"Our company has vacancies for unskilled workers," says a banner outside the Dongguan Lighting Decoration Factory.
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Next door, at a huge glassware factory, a red and yellow sign reads: "Our company is expanding and needs unskilled workers, glass technicians, supervisors and quality controllers."
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It has been nine months since the government of Guangdong Province, across from Hong Kong, first acknowledged an acute shortage of workers. And the situation has not improved: In February the provincial government said one million workers were needed in this highly industrialized part of China that is, without exaggeration, the factory to the world, making everything from sneakers to mobile phones.
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Officially the shortage represents around 5 percent of the Guangdong migrant work force, but a study done by the provincial statistics office shows a broad-based problem: 70 percent of 329 companies surveyed said they were having difficulties recruiting workers.
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Experts say the shortage has many causes: monthly wages are too low - often around 500 yuan, or $60 - to attract workers from far-off provinces. Word has spread about poor working conditions in some factories. And there is less incentive for farmers to get jobs in the city because food prices and government subsidies have risen.
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Whatever the reasons, the lack of workers here is significant in one very important way: It explodes the myth, still very popular in Europe and the United States, that China has a bottomless pool of people who will work anywhere at any price.
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"There isn't this vast labor pool that flows like a liquid to whatever side China is tilting," said Arthur Kroeber, managing editor of China Economic Quarterly.
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The shortage is affecting both big and small companies. In the back alleys of a run-down Guangzhou neighborhood called Shui Bo, red posters are pasted on nearly every available wall. A typical sign reads: "We have orders, need 10 workers. We offer room and board."
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Kroeber says one of the reasons for the shortage may be better communications: Newspapers have reported cases of activist lawyers suing employers after workers were injured on the job.
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Also, more people are telling friends about poor work conditions, something that has become easier with cellphones. The number of mobile phone users in China almost quadrupled to 329 million last year from 85 million in 2000, according to the International Telecommunication Union.
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"I heard a case where a factory deducted 20 yuan a month for salaries because they said they were providing drinking water to their workers," said Vincent Leung, a human resources manager at Epson, the printer manufacturer.
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"Their reputation is so bad," Leung said of some Guangdong factories. "Now they are paying the price. They cannot find workers."
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One of the most striking images during a recent visit to Guangzhou was seeing Wang Kong, a jobless 24-year-old migrant from Jiangxi Province, who said he had nine years of experience in the textile industry. He sat on a bridge above a fetid, blackened waterway, chewed a piece of sugar cane and looked contentedly at a large line of factory recruiters stationed along the riverbank.
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Why isn't he interested in taking a job from them? "They're not offering enough," Wang said.
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He is holding out for a salary of 1,500 yuan, nearly three times the minimum wage, an example of the bargaining power that the labor shortage has given workers.
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Experts say the effects of the shortage should not be exaggerated. It is limited to the coastal provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, across from Taiwan. And Guangdong is a special case in China because it is disproportionately reliant on migrant labor.
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But one thing is sure: The days of talking about 100 million or 200 million jobless peasants scouring the nation for any work they can find are probably over. Just ask Wang. He's happy to sit on the bridge until someone offers him the right salary.
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Thomas Fuller can be reached at fuller@iht.com
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